1. Field of the Invention
This invention generally relates to beverage brewers, and methods of brewing and, more particularly, to beverage brewers and methods of brewing in which the quantity of brewing liquid that is delivered to the brewing ingredient and the time period during which the brewing liquid is dispensed into a brewing ingredient holder is automatically controlled, and to beverage ingredient filters in which the ingredient is contained during brewing.
2. Discussion of the Relevant Prior Art
The inventor has determined that there is a common problem associated with all commercial beverage brewers of the drip-type in which the brew liquid is passed through brewing ingredient. The brewing ingredient is ground coffee, ground tea, tea leaves and other like dry beverage ingredients. The brew ingredients leave a residue or structure that contains the essential dry beverage components. When the beverage brewing liquid that is passed through a layer of the dry beverage ingredient during the dispensing period of the brewing cycle and the post-dispense drip period the dry beverage ingredients are dissolved and released into the beverage brewing liquid upon contact. The brewing ingredient is generally contained within a removable filter that is supported within a brew basket that is movably mounted beneath a brewing liquid dispenser, or dispenser, to receive the hot brewing water. The filter is manually loaded with beverage ingredient and then placed in a filter holder within in the brew basket. Each type of the brew basket has a generally truncated conical shape with sides that slope inwardly from the open top of the brew basket to the beverage dispenser outlet that is located at the bottom of the brew basket.
The problem with this arrangement is that it is not possible to obtain a uniform contact of the hot brewing water with the ingredient within the brew basket during the dispensing period, while the hot water is being dispensed and the subsequent post-dispensing drip period of the brew cycle. In the case of ground coffee, when hot water first makes contact with the coffee gases are generated that causes the coffee grounds to foam upwardly and also to float layers of hot water that have not yet seeped through the upper surface of the layer of hot coffee.
The inventor believes that for this reason and because of the generally conical shape of the layer of beverage ingredient, and despite continuous spraying of the hot brewing water across the upper surface of the beverage ingredient, some of the ingredient, generally nearer the side walls of the brew basket, does not receive sufficient contact with the hot water to strip off all the beverage ingredient component to be dissolved into the water that is being held by the beverage ingredient. The beverage ingredient is therefore wasted. Likewise, other portions of the beverage ingredient, generally closer to the central portion of the brew basket receive too much contact with the hot water, i.e. more contact with the water than needed to dissolve all the beverage ingredient components, and other undesirable ingredient components are dissolved into the brewed beverage. Consequently, optimum brewing of the beverage ingredient is not obtained and the brewing ingredient component that does not dissolve into the hot water because of insufficient hot water contact with the associated brewing ingredient is wasted.
Both the time of contact of the hot water with the beverage ingredient and the amount of hot water that is mixed with a given amount of beverage are critical to optimizing the quality of the resulting brewed beverage. Different types of beverage ingredient, such as different types of coffee, and different forms of a given beverage ingredient, such as a given ground coffee of different degrees of coarseness require different amounts of hot water for optimum brewing of the resulting beverage. Unfortunately, there is another problem of known beverage brewers which exacerbates the nonuniform ingredient saturation problem noted above. The problem is the inability to easily adjust the quantity of hot water that is dispensed without changing the duration of the dispensing time period and the inability to easily adjust the duration of the dispense period without changing the quantity of hot water that is to be dispensed.
The truncated conical shape of know beverage ingredient filters precludes them from being easily stacked or packaged and accordingly in all known commercial drip-type brewers the conical filters are manually loaded with ingredient at the coffee brewing site.
Reference should be made to U.S. Pat. No. 5,000,082 entitled "Beverage Maker And Method Of Making Beverage" issued Mar. 19, 1991 and U.S. Pat. No. 5,331,885 entitled "Semiautomatic Beverage Maker And Method" issued Jul. 26, 1994 of the present inventor and the patents cited therein, all of which are incorporated herein by reference, for structural, mechanical and other details of the conventional components of coffee brewers and the like, with reference to the features noted above, and in general with reference to the embodiments described below to the extent conventional elements are disclosed in functional block form only and such details are desired.